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A host of conservative politicians, including PM Turnbull, have opportunistically used the South Australian power outage to cast doubt on renewable energy, writes John Passant in Independent Australia.

Research by the Melbourne Energy Institute has shown that a 200km by 200km square of solar panels – 0.05 percent of total land in Australia – would produce enough energy to power the whole of the country. Include the use of wind and hydroelectric power and the potential is enormous.

This is the sort of infrastructure that should be built, yet it is the mining companies and coal plant owners that have everything to lose from it. Let’s start with taxing Gina Rinehart’s $10b, and BHP’s record $22.5b profit and fund renewables that way. If the system is geared towards upholding the profits of these corporations to the detriment of the planet, then the system needs to go.

Imagine the car plants in Australia being geared up for production to address climate change. They could produce buses for mass public transport, light rail vehicles, high speed rail and trains, electric cars, solar and wind farms…

Instead of locking in gas fired power stations, let’s move to a totally renewable energy Australia by 2020. That won’t happen without a social revolution, a mass upsurge of working people to move away from concepts of profitability to satisfying human need democratically.